Joe Ishikawa was a Japanese-American who was born in Los Angeles and interned during World War II in Colorado. He left the internment camp to enroll in graduate school at the University of Nebraska. There, he met Olivia Brandhorst, a German-American who had led a cloistered life in several German-speaking communities on the Great Plains where anybody not a German Lutheran was considered an "outsider." Although their upbringings could have hardly been more different, they shared common values and overcame considerable opposition to marry.

A Wisconsinite traces the lives of his great-grandparents C. W. Brandhorst (1869-1930) and Alvina Backhaus (1872-1954), pioneers in Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip. It delves into the world of German-Americans in World War I and into the lives of C. W.'s ancestors, many of whom participated in the witch persecutions of seventeenth-century Germany. A table of known ancestors and descendants of C. W. and Alvina is included.